Control Resonant gameplay preview is 2026's most-anticipated action game

After playing a few hours of Control Resonant, I’m surprised to learn that the sequel is way more consistent with its predecessor than it looks at a distance. The hero is new, the combat is an entirely different beast, and the twisted Manhattan setting is an eye-popping change from the brutalism of The Oldest House, but don’t worry: It’s still very much Control under the hood, even if it has a lot more supernatural trickery up its sleeve.

The first chunk of my demo took me through the opening hour or so of the sequel. I was quickly introduced to Dylan Faden, a living weapon shaped by the Federal Bureau of Control, who awakens from a long slumber and sets out to find his sister (and Control protagonist) Jesse. Within moments, I found myself fighting my way out of The Oldest House, which is as infested with Hiss as ever. It’s extremely familiar, save for the fact that I don’t have a shapeshifting gun to work with. Instead, I was initially given the choice to wield one of three melee weapons. I chose a misshapen scythe, letting me cut through monsters with wide swipes, though I toyed around with giant hammers and metallic whips later.

That’s just the foundation of an expressive combat system that makes Dylan feel like a Swiss Army Knife. Soon enough, I get to pick a secondary weapon that’s mapped to my other attack button. I chose a drill as a compliment to the crowd-controlling blade, giving me a powerful option for honing in on one enemy with force. Shortly after that, I augmented my toolkit further by picking a special ability. I opted for telekinesis, letting me draw in nearby rocks and blast them at enemies. And then even later, I jumped ahead further in the game and was given two more specials: a ground slam and a fire blast.

All of that comes together to form a combat system that you’d swear was designed by PlatinumGames. Battles are fast and fluid, with Dylan mixing and matching all of his tools to rip through Hiss monsters. You can leap into the air with a double jump, knock out an aerial combo with your scythe, move into a powered-up drill attack, launch a few fireballs, slam to the ground, and trigger a finisher on your staggered foe. Crucially, there’s no parrying; it’s all offense, aside from an evasive dash, drawing on the same propulsive action flow as Doom (2016). You need to dive into battles head-on to survive, closing the distance on laser-eyed enemies and chaining finishers to regain your health. That system looks like it will go a lot deeper in the full game, too. There’s an enormous skill tree, plus individual trees for every weapon.

Combat is the main area where Control Resonant feels like an entirely new game rather than a sequel, but you can also feel that in its traversal. It almost feels like a 3D platformer at times with Dylan’s double jump, hover glide, and air dash. You get the most mileage out of those in Resonant’s trippy version of Manhattan. While battles tend to happen at a street level, there’s a lot of verticality when hopping around rooftops to get to the next story mission. It’s all about momentum, and that’s a big change for Remedy.

For all those clear differences, though, Resonant still feels like Control through and through where it matters. I first felt that in the game’s first major boss fight, where I had to battle against a killer statue head. It was a gloriously weird encounter where I needed to duck and weave as it chucked taxis and stop signs at me. It was bizarre and spectacular, like all of Control’s most memorable moments.

The real shining moment came when I jumped ahead to a mid-game story mission called “The Sinkhole.” Here, Dylan needs to hitch a ride on a machine that’s digging down through a skyscraper floor by floor. Imagine an RPG dungeon, but built in the image of Control’s liminal spaces. Dylan is dropped into a maze of nonsensically connected rooms filled with piles of furniture — a scene straight out of Backrooms. To make matters more mind-bending, I get the ability to swap gravity to stand on any floor, wall, or ceiling in the labyrinth. The disorientation only mounts the deeper I go into the structure, as I eventually need to make an escape by following the sound of music through a looping series of living rooms. It’s a total trip, and one that makes it clear that I‘m still very much in the same universe no matter what my weapons look like.

Whether Control Resonant can carry that momentum through the entire game is just going to come down to the final balance between action and mind-bending spectacle. The weakest part of my demo was a long combat encounter where I had to fight back waves of Hiss monsters at the bottom of The Sinkhole. That involved getting myself airborne over and over just to reach a floating monster long enough to land a few hits. As fierce and fun as the action is, I was always more drawn in when navigating unsettling environments that fold in on themselves or unraveling cryptic clues as to what’s going on with Jessie.

Though I still have some questions about the final project, my biggest ones have been answered by my hands-on time. Yes, Remedy can do Devil May Cry. Yes, the streets of Manhattan can be just as strange and alluring as The Oldest House. And yes, a full-on action RPG can still feel like Control. That’s enough to keep my faith in Remedy intact on the road to Control Resonant’s launch. I’ll go wherever the studio wants to take me; it has earned that trust.

Control Resonant will be released Sept. 24 for PlayStation 5, Windows PC, and Xbox Series X.